Ashes
by Passiflora Incarnata
Summary: In the dream, they are exactly as they were meant to be: two halves of the same whole, a single being who creates, destroys, and creates again.


_In the dream she sees the coastline waiting. _

Once this village was small, a gathering of only a few families. Finding a sustainable home, they bred - one generation, two generations, three. Others came. More houses sprang up. Eventually they began practicing industry, pulling fish from the sea in massive nets, saving some to cook in their own hearths and selling the rest. The coastline grew thick with the signs of their livelihood and the lines of those homes and markets moved inland for miles. Boats came and went, with each tide bearing more out, bringing more in. The lonely coast became a stable, functioning pocket of civilization.

He begins to stir in her arms. A bodiless voice calls him: _My son, the work awaits. _

Slowly waking, he pulls away from their embrace and descends.

As if standing on the Earth itself, she watches him land and run down the beaten dirt path that serves as the main thoroughfare of the village. His eyes have cast off the last vestiges of sleep and now shine brightly as the sun. He spreads his arms wide as he runs, embracing this place in a love that its people, she knows, will never understand. A cool breeze travels behind his extended arms. The clouds that have created respite from the sun thicken and grow darker. Mothers noting the sky call their children inside. Fishermen warily test their nets and look shoreward.

But they don't see him. Only she, his other half, sees the storm's true origin.

A wide, happy smile breaks out across his face. They are identical, yet something in his face belies his youth and innocence. To him, this is a gift. This is how he loves the world. He doesn't recognize the pain that will fall in his wake. He must not.

As his bare feet come to the shore, he unfurls his wings and takes to the air. His body spins in a graceful circle as he rises to the gathering clouds. His ascent is like a dance. She hears his laugh, a high musical sound that the wind casts in all directions.

He disappears into the clouds.

A peal of thunder shatters the sky. The clouds turn dark and grow tall, stretching halfway to Heaven itself. Shadows swallow the horizon. The thick wall of clouds slowly begins to churn. A high wind carries echoes of his laugh over the water. Waves rise and rush toward the small boats, whose occupants scramble to bring them to shore. Men cry out against the waves that batter their boats, but their cries must go unanswered.

This cycle is older than time.

She can no longer see her brother, but she can feel him. High above the sea he moves in a frenzy, calling forth wind, rain, lighting, cyclones. With a slender finger he draws a circle in the clouds. The circle grows into what will be the eye of the storm.

For a week he will remain over that eye. He will spin in a flurry of long hair and heavy wings across miles, laughing in his love. Beneath the storm, the waves will capsize boats and swallow beaches. High winds will crush trees and homes. The village where he began his part of the cycle will be almost entirely flattened.

When the storm begins to dissipate, she goes to him. He seems a mere boy now, exhausted by his own games. His eyes can barely open. At the next step of his dance, she pulls him into her arms.

"Your work is done, Rosiel," she whispers.

"Sister, I've made it ready for you."

"So you have." She presses a kiss to his forehead.

He drifts into his own dream. Then he is gone, lulled back to his resting place by the grace of their Mother.

Two centuries later, he uses a spark against an old pile of wood that has become too dry in the midsummer heat. The small flames follow his journey through the town and toward the forest, growing larger and hotter until he arrives at the trees with a wall of flames. When the fire begins to die days later, she finds him floating above the blackened trees and embers, his hair and wings singed.

"You stayed too close this time," she says, smoothing his hair away from his face.

He smiles, leaning into her cool touch. "Did you see, Alexiel? It was glorious."

And it is. The ruined earth below presents her with endless possibilities. The ashes are his gift to her.

Much further in time, it will be wires and machines that call to him. His inorganic nature makes such devices resonate with him and he manipulates them with the curiosity and cleverness of a child. He becomes a broken seal, a frayed cable, a burning circuit, an error code, a small, hidden space where a spark pushes toward flashpoint.

As soon as he is done, her work begins. Whatever he destroys, she makes new. She takes the opposite path in her turn, calming seas, extinguishing fires, clearing smoke around wreckage. Where her brother's hands leave barren ground, she will plant gardens. Where he breaks walls, she will string vines. Where his work releases souls from the burdens of this life, she readies homes for rebirths. Where he leads armies to shed blood, she ushers bodies into the ground to fertilize the earth. Where he sows discord, she raises new revolutions.

_In the dream, they are exactly as they were meant to be. Two halves of the same whole, a single being who creates, destroys, and creates again - always in love. When dormant, they lie in each other's arms, identical flesh against identical flesh. _

When she wakes, she feels the cold, hard chair beneath her. She feels him nearby, but still as if a great distance lies between them. She cannot sense their Mother's voice, only their Father's hateful eyes.

_You did this to us. _

_How could you do this to us? _

When at last her twin comes close enough that she can see him through the thorns that surround her garden prison, she pretends to be asleep. She pretends to be dead.

He approaches slowly. His gold eyes watch her with quiet dread. He wants to be close to her, she knows, but with every step that fails to get a reaction from her, he feels her rejection all the more.

But this is better, she tells herself. His body no longer shudders with pain.

_In the dream, even the fire licking his feathers feels good to him. _

His voice is a cracked whisper when he first speaks. "Sister. Will you look at me?"

She forces her pupils to fix on some point beyond him. Her eyelids strain not to blink.

He lifts an arm, letting the sleeve of his robe fall back to reveal a pale, unblemished arm. "Can you see, Alexiel? The graft is still working."

He doesn't thank her for his healthy flesh anymore. Maybe he believes she owes it to him now, or maybe someone has finally told him how it was taken from her, how she was drugged and carried into the laboratory and strapped down to a table so the tissues of her body could be harvested to make his.

When she doesn't answer, he lets his arm drop. He watches her another moment, then kneels at her feet.

"Please touch me," he whispers.

She doesn't move.

"Sister? Please?" He stretches a hand out to her.

She wonders why he never forces her to touch him.

"Alexiel, please…"

_In the dream, they hold each other as if they are one still one body. Even between cycles their fingers are linked_.

The closest she has ever come to touching him was when she was still a child. With the Creator's permission, the sisters escorted her to the facility where she and twin had been born. Until that day she'd never been allowed to return; Rosiel had never been allowed to leave.

She gasped in horror at the sight of him: a shapeless tangle of flesh and wires suspended in a glass tank.

The sister spoke without emotion. "Daughter of God, behold your brother, cleft from the flesh of Adam Kadamon."

Her voice quavered as she swallowed her pity and disgust. "Can I…hold him?"

"No, Lady Alexiel. His tissue is still raw. Being touched would only hurt him. But you can do this…"

The sister pressed her hand to the glass. Alexiel followed her lead. The glass was warm from the synthetic amniotic fluid that held the malformed lump. She had no sense that he could feel her presence at all.

_In the dream, they become a tangle of limbs when she returns to his embrace. Divided from the same body, touching him feels like touching herself. _

Now, here in the garden, his eyes darken in disappointment. He lowers his forehead to her bare knee. "I wish I knew what I did to make you hate me so."

This is bait, she knows. If she accuses him, at least she will speak to him.

She maintains her silence. While his head is lowered, she allows herself to blink.

_In the dream, as they come back together they praise each other's work. His voice is a high, excited exaltation of the thickness of her forests and cities and the challenge they presented. In a calmer measured tone, she thanks him for the ashen paths he left for her._

"If you would just tell me, I'd make it right. I swear."

_The only thing you did wrong_, she thinks, _was to be born weak_. She knows their Father's voice poisoned him before he could even hear. He'd never had a chance.

He raises his head. Anger burns in his yellow eyes. His lips, once cut from her own face, contract in a sneer. "It isn't my fault He loves me more! I didn't make Him do it! If you weren't so cold and cruel, He might favor you!"

She represses a shudder at the thought. Their Father's favor is a curse. Already she can see the madness waiting beneath her twin's anger, and she knows he has been designed for a fate even more painful than her own.

_In the dream, there is no Creator, only the Mother who once made them both whole_.

Rosiel stands, regarding her with the contempt of a spoiled child. "I won't give you the pleasure of watching me suffer! If our Father loves me, I should be with Him, not groveling at your feet!"

She wants to break her vow and cry out to him. She wants to tell him what their Father has done to them, how He has corrupted their purpose by separating them and setting them against each other. It would be worth the torment He would inflict on them to finally just say it.

But she stays silent.

With a great beating of his wings, his third exposed by his anger, Rosiel takes to the sky. Her eyes come back into focus and she watches him become smaller and smaller as he rushes to the Tower where their Father waits.

_In the dream, she burns the Tower down and places its ashes in her brother's hands._

* * *

**Notes:** This story was inspired by _Godzilla: King of the Monsters_. I'm not kidding.


End file.
